The 3 best books by Ed McBain

It never hurts to rescue one of those authors from whom almost all of us have read one of his books. Because considering how prolific Ed mcbain, who most or least has enjoyed any of his openly criminal novels.

The real name of the writer after his aliases was Salvatore Lombino. But He always disguised himself as aliases like Ed McBain, Evan Hunter, Richard Marsten, or John Abbott.

Under one pseudonym or another, he is a current cult author who during his greatest splendor, back in the 60s, published works of classic noir that, although they sometimes composed extensions on rewritten plots, always contributed a taste for the most popular black genre that ended up occupying the bedside tables of millions of readers around the world.

Master of the intrigue and suspense, Ed McBain also found a way to represent some of his works in film. When a crime or mystery novel ends up being transferred to the big screen, with top-notch actors as was the case with McBain, who had Kirk Douglas or Burt Reynolds, it can really be deduced that the proposed stories have those action components. , tension, intrigue and suspense capable of being translated into a visual imaginary capable of finding accommodation in cinema.

From McBain's handwriting, scenarios were born clinging to the memory of genre readers. Isola like that transmutation of New York and its 87th District, with a police station through which it still seems that we can walk through the offices of its 16 official detectives, or enter a conversation suspended in time, about the wisps of tobacco smoke, a dialogue in which questions are raised towards the resolution of a case ...

Top 3 best Ed McBain books

The dealer

The truth is that determining a ranking of the best McBain novels has something pretentious. Each of his works maintains a similar charm. These are masterfully executed novels, skillfully, without one that you can openly classify as the best of all.

But, opting for very personal impressions, I decide that this is my best option. An alleged suicide leads us into the dark world of drugs, unfinished business, power struggles for black markets. Detective Steve Carella takes the reins of the case with his partner Pete Byrnes.

As the evidence clarifies that suicide is a covert murder, the matter is linked to the heroin trade, and with the dark threads that run between the District 87 police itself. A very murky matter in which Steve will have to walk with leaden feet while trying to meet the murderer.

The dealer

The woman robber

A great novel with a double aspect. On the one hand, we meet a unique robber who finds his perfect targets in the city's women to rob them while he deploys his arts as a white-collar thief, elegant in appearance but paradoxically capable of violating women to achieve his lucrative objective.

As we progress in the discovery of this character, we meet Jeannie Paige, a young woman with problems whose final death no one can avoid. Only in her inevitable final silence the young woman has taken a great secret.

The frames converge towards the final resolution. Everything indicates that the thief is also the murderer, but only small clues shared with the reader, point to other very different paths.

The woman robber

Heat

If in the previous novel we find two parallel stories, in this new novel located in that covert New York that is Isola, we enjoy up to three branches for the same ending, executed with the mastery of times and scenarios of one of the best authors of the genre classic black.

Isola is going through one of the worst heat waves in its history. In the oppressive atmosphere it seems that the base passions are beginning to give in to their darkest impulses. Crimes of passion that happen here and there. Carella and Kling, the two detectives of the 87th, can be overwhelmed by so many coincidental cases and the stifling heat.

Heat, Ed McBain
5/5 - (7 votes)

1 comment on “The 3 best books by Ed McBain”

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.